Darkness and light

I haven't quite begun to wrestle with the massive aching emptiness you've left in my heart. But I know this much: my world is a little more lovely because your light shone upon it. I don't quite understand how someone who had such a bright and positive influence could become so enshrouded in darkness. And yet I have recently felt the chill of a particular darkness begin to envelope my heart and I feel afraid and alone. And it makes me wonder if you felt that too. I just wish I could have been there to dispel some of that oppressive darkness the way you did for me so many times. You were a bright light in my world. And I promise to do my best to carry your light through the rest of my days in your stead.

"from the bed near your death,
and all the machines that made a mess,
far away the falcon flew.
now i want to be near you."

"What's left is only bittersweet,
for the rest of my life, admitting the best is behind me.
now i'm drunk and afraid, wishing the world would go away
what's the point of singing songs,
if they'll never even hear you?"

pockets

every little wad of paper

every receipt

every empty wrapper

every tissue

my heart holds its breath

hoping it's some kind of note

some kind of clue

but it's just a wad of paper

just a receipt

just an empty wrapper

just a used tissue

mazed

if there ever was an example of 'high as a kite', this would be it. i was the most high i'd ever been in my life - mostly because i'd never been high in my life before. but even if i had, this just somehow would be more high than that would have been.

walking in a circle that, in retrospect, must have had a radius of no more than 15 feet, felt like wandering in the desert with moses. i felt an unshakeable sense of being lost - simultaneously experiencing an equally unshakeable, and yet unsettling, familiarity with the rocks and grass i was walking past.

like some sick joke. a corn maze with no way out.

to have or to eat (waxing philosophical with anna and alice, my sweet nieces)

i never used to understand this, but there are certain things in life you simply cannot do. many of us firmly believe that a person should be able to do whatever they want in this life, and i suppose in a perfect world that might be true. however, you simply cannot have your cake and eat it too. it's a tough lesson to learn and can only really truly be learned when you eat your cake and find that, indeed, you can't have it anymore. it seems when you have your cake you can still believe some kind of illusion or idea that if you were to eat it, you could still somehow have it. that whole scenario is just make believe, and you end up believing what you want every time. but when you actually eat your cake, then it becomes painfully obvious that, yep, it's just like they said - you can't have it anymore. your cake is gone and you've got to live with that. so no matter what you believe the reality is, you've got to decide which you want - to have your cake, or to eat it - before you make a move.

so choose. because you just can't have both. 

the problem with gravity

i used to really resent gravity - always "workin against me" as john mayer would say. we are helpless against it. with all our earthly genius we cannot overcome it. what goes up must come down. and you can't really get around it. i would daydream about being able to fly and float around weightlessly as if swimming through some intangible substance. i would dream about becoming an astronaut to live in outer space where gravity has no hold on me. gravity just seems to resist me all the time.

then there is this moment when you realize - that thing you have perceived as an enemy in your life has been an ally all along.

without gravity (nothing to resist us), we grow weak. with nothing to pull us down, we never learn how to pull ourselves up - we would never know the feel of standing on our own two feet. the rivers would forget where to flow. the snow would have nowhere to fall. 

yes, gravity resists us, but we also resist gravity. if gravity didn't resist us, our muscles and bones would waste away and we would become weak and decrepit. and similarly, if we didn't resist gravity, our bones and muscles would waste away and we would become weak and decrepit. and it is through this mutual resistance that we grow stronger - stronger in mind, stronger in body, stronger in spirit. we learn patience, perseverance, resilience. we learn resolve, we learn victory and we learn overcoming.

so the next time i fall and it feels like gravity wants to hold me down, i'll remember that gravity isn't the enemy. i will remember the powerful truth of mutual resistance.

we cannot overcome gravity, but we don't have to let it overcome us.

"social" media

we stood around quietly engaged in our phones, sort of vaguely aware of each other, looking forward to tomorrow when we could look back on tonight and recall how awesome and epic it was.